Section 12

12. Suppose this Universe were the direct creation of the
Reason-Principle applying itself, quite unchanged, to Matter,
retaining, that is, the hostility to partition which it derives from
its Prior, the Intellectual Principle- then, this its product, so
produced, would be of supreme and unparalleled excellence. But the
Reason-Principle could not be a thing of entire identity or even of
closely compact diversity; and the mode in which it is here
manifested
is no matter of censure since its function is to be all things, each
single thing in some distinctive way.

But has it not, besides itself entering Matter, brought other
beings down? Has it not for example brought Souls into Matter and,
in adapting them to its creation, twisted them against their own
nature and been the ruin of many of them? And can this be right?

The answer is that the Souls are, in a fair sense,
members of this
Reason-Principle and that it has not adapted them to the creation by
perverting them, but has set them in the place here to which their
quality entitles them.